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Barclays' Diamond Pins 'Reprehensible' Rate-Rigging On 14 Traders

So began Bob Diamond’s testimony before Parliament in London Wednesday, a day after the bank’s former chief executive resigned amid a scandal over its involvement in manipulating Libor, a benchmark interest rate off which trillions of dollars in contracts around the world are based.

Diamond, who called the attempted manipulation of Libor by traders within Barclays “reprehensible behavior,” that made him “physically ill.” Those 14 traders, he said, were acting on behalf of themselves, not the firm, and the fallout is being felt by all of the firm’s 140,00 employees.

“I’m sorry, I’m disappointed, and I’m also angry,” he continued, about an hour into his appearance before the Treasury Select Committee. “This was wrong, and I’m not happy about it,” he said, “but this does not represent the Barclays that I know and I love.”

Earlier, Diamond painted a picture of October 2008 when rumors that the bank could not fund itself — which may have came due to its higher Libor submissions — could have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. That may in part explain why other banks may have been committing even more egregious rate-massaging than Barclays.

On every day in that month, Diamond said, Barclays was the highest or second-highest Libor submitter, while other banks that had taken emergency loans or even been nationalized, were submitting lower rates. “Some of those banks could not get funding at any level,” Diamond said, let alone the levels at which they pegged Libor figures, while Barclays was funding itself adequately.

As to whether he was instructed by Bank of England deputy Paul Tucker to lower Barclays’ levels, Diamond avoided answering in the affirmative, pointing to the fact that a drop in the bank’s submissions following his conversation with Tucker was aligned with declines from other firms, given that for all of November the bank delivered the first, second or third-highest Libor rates. In essence, the bank was funding itself, but the perception among “Whitehall ministers,” or senior government officials, could have been that Barclays was in danger of distress because its Libor submissions were consistently at the high end of the range during the financial crisis.

Diamond, whose resignation was said to come under intense pressure from U.K. regulators at the Financial Services Authority and Bank of England, said the court of public opinion has been unfair given the bank’s participation in identifying the issue and working to make good. ”History will judge Barclays as an incredible institution,” Diamond said, and the best way for the bank to put things back together and get past questions of his leadership “was for me to step down.”

The former Barclays chief grew clearly uncomfortable when questioned early on whether Chairman Marcus Agius had mentioned pressure from regulators when they discussed his resignation. Agius himself resigned Monday, before returning as full-time chairman Tuesday to help the firm find Diamond’s replacement.

Barclays is far from the only bank at the heart of the rate-rigging scandal. Global banks including UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and others that contribute Libor submissions are also reportedly under investigation by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. Barclays was the first to settle, agreeing June 27 to pay more than $450 million.

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I’m sorry, but this horrid display of blame and retribution for things that occurred over 5 years ago HAS GOT TO END.

This all just reminds me of the time and resources WASTED on ‘robo-schmobo’ with the end result being that all we did was extort out of a few banks money that is NOT going to the very few that might have been affected.

Here to we are rehashing things that are being or have already been addressed. And here to the real victims are exactly who? Some mortgage holder in Wisconsin? Get real is you think any of that mortgage rate was affected by Barclays “Grading on the Curve” of their libor. BTW aren’t our mortgage rates based on the Fed’s discount rate? This libor bs sure makes Bernanke look stupid then.

All we end up doing will be wasting maybe another 2 years on pursuing a ghost and all for the sake of payback or distorted retribution.

WHY the heck are we NOT going after the shorts who keep trying to destroy the very entities that we are trying to extort, or in many cases heal? WHY the heck are we not going after the shorts that keep trying to destroy Nation’s bonds or sheer existence?